If you hit enter you'll end up with a colon on the next line too. And for each time you repeat you'll have a new colon (this part should really mess with anyone's head who has studied human anatomy in school). Now since I know you have been enjoying yourself hitting the ENTER key a few million times I'm going to show you how to get rid of all those colons. The first is simply deleting the program and making a new one. Whenever I am telling you how to find something I will seperate each button push by a - and if a second or alpha is chosen before then I'll name the letter on top. First of all to exit out of the code window click 2nd-QUIT. You never have to save your code it is always saved automatically when you exit. Next it is 2nd-MEM-2-7. Notice I used the numbers to select the choices in the menu and I didn't scroll down to find each one. If you memorize the menu numbers when you are programming it will go alot faster. Alright now you just use the up or down arrows and select the program you no longer want and hit delete and then when it asks "Are you sure?...cause if I were you I wouldn't do that...I'd talk it over with a counselor or something and" Quickly choose yes. Assuming you actually want to delete the program. Now you need to get back into the code window (if you didn't delete the program). You do this by going to PRGM-scroll right to edit-Choose program from list. Then that familiar old code window I illistrated above should pop up.

So Where Does This Code Stuff Come From? Is It Like Morse Code? S.O.S.

The majority of code we will be using will come from one of 5 places:

1.) The code which is found when in the code window and you press the PRGM button again. There are 3 collumns here. The first is for setting up loops, the second "I/0" stands for Input/Output and does just that (displays messages on the screen and takes user input). The last collumn is PRGM and this is a list of programs that you can run from within your program (which I will call a prog from now on... program is too big to type alot). Look through this menu a bit before we begin and make logical word associations (like Disp means Display and Lbl means Label...things like that.)

2.) By using 2nd-Test you'll find the second most used section. It has 2 columns also. The first one is all that greater than less than stuff they pumped into your head in Fourth grade and the second Collumn has logical tests. I'll talk a bit more about these later.

3.) The letters found on the keypad...A,B,C etc.

4.) The numbers found on the keypad...1,2,3 etc.

5.) Things found under the VARS button (strings in particular)

6.) Alright I know I said five places but there is a 6th that is used alot also. It is only used in graphical games, not in those boring games like Hick Quest or Drug Cartel. These are the fun games like Duck Hunt and bowling where you actually get to see what you are doing. The info for this is found in 2nd-DRAW, and I'll explain it a bit better near the end of this article since it is the part I understand the least.

Eurokea I've Hit The Code Jackpot....Now Where Do I Put This Mumbo Jumbo?

This is what programming is all about...where do I put this stuff? I'm going to type up the source code for a simple screen saver type program and then go back and disect it. Remember anything after a # is mean to be read not typed.

SCREEN SAVER

Alright I'll start explaining where everything is found right now along with what it is actually doing. First of all if you ever run into the problem where my instructions to find a command aren't well written then go to 2nd- CATALOG and it lists all the commands you can give your calculator in alphabetical order. Alright the "->" I have used above is really a sideways arrow which you get when you push the STO-> button (right above ON). Str1 is found by VARS-7-ENTER. This means String 1 as I mentioned above. A string is a variable (like those X's and Y's you always have to solve for in Algebra) but it is usually a word. It just consists of more than 1 letter which are put in quotation marks to indicate they all go together. I used "SPAM SPAM SPAM" for a few reasons. I could have just used "SPAM" but then it would have only printed it once on the screen and I wanted to take up the whole screen. Since I know that a screen is 16 accross and 8 down I figured out that I needed 3 SPAM's with 2 spaces between each one or 4 SPAM's without spaces to equal 16. When I am referring to 16 that is 16 letters or numbers you can fit. That isn't important just yet though. Aligning text so it is centered and all that jazz isn't very important until later. Next I labeled a point in my code point 1 (Lbl is found at PRGM-9). I did this so that when I want I can start my code over from right here and not at the beginning (Not that there is much difference between the beginning and here but it is redundant to reset Spam as String 1). (The compiler runs code from top to bottom following the laws of loops etc.). Alright now I have used ClrHome (PRGM-scroll to I/O-8). Usually programs start and end with ClrHome because it does just that...clears the home screen. That way you don't have to look at all those ugly numbers in the background. In this program it wasn't really neccessary to clear everything because we wrote over it directly with Display anyways. Now I set it up so A=1. I did this because of a lack of a better method to count anything. What this is going to do since it is located just below the label 1 is every time my code goes to lable 1 A will reset at 1 and also the screen will be cleared. Now I've labeled a second part of my code as Point 2. I did this so I can loop back here without clearing home and resetting A. Now I used Disp Str1. Disp is found by hitting PRGM-scrolling to I/O-3. Usually I would type Disp "Hello World" which would display the text Hello World. Also if we typed Disp "Hello","World" seperated by a comma like that each in its own parenthesis then it would display "Hello" on one line and "World" on the next. Now that you know how to use the Disp you can almost make your own Hick Quest. Next is A+1->A. What this does is increase A by one (the old A plus 1 equals the new A). For this program if A=1 then I've Displayed spam on one line. If it equals 2 then I've displayed SPAM on 2 lines. So A=The number of lines I've displayed SPAM on. Now If A=8 (notice I had to use an equal sign and NOT a -> to test if it is true...because I really don't know if it is or not. = tests if something is true and -> makes it true). If is found at Prgm-1. OK what this means is If SPAM has been displayed on 8 lines (since there aren't any more than that anyways) then go back up to Lbl 1 and start running the code from there. It only goes to Lbl 1 if the If statement is true. So if A doesn't equal 8 then it doesn't go to Lbl 1 either. Goto is PRGM-0. Next if A<8 (i.e. SPAM hasn't yet covered all 8 lines) then goto l. So basically this program says:

SPAM =String 1
1=A
Display String 1 (SPAM) 8 times and then clear the screen, display it 8 more

When you run this (exit from code window) PRGM then select the screen saver program from the list and hit ENTER ENTER. You will see that it seems to move or something because of the strange way it lights up. That is due to the fact that I don't have all of the spams displayed at once and that it clears the screen after each time.

I actually edited this program specifically for this tutorial. Before when I had written it up I did a lot more work. It looked like this I believe.

You should realize that they do the exact same thing but that the first one took me around 2 minutes to type up and this one took me nearly 15 minutes of study hall. I want you to know that there is always more than one way to do things (in fact I could have used commans after the first 3 spams and set it up with only 1 Display and 8 sets of 3 SPAM) and if you find something that works better than what I have put down then most definately use it. Also notice that you can edit the SPAM text to say something else like I AM THE COOLEST over and over again. In this instance it is alot easier to edit the one line of text in the first one than it is to edit the 8 lines in the second one. To exit this program click 2nd-On. You will be offered Two choices. The first is Quit which does just that and the second is Goto which searches to the point in your code where the compiler had problems reading it. If you have an error in your code (if you had put Disp "SPAM) and you had left out the closing parenthesis when you ran your program it would come up with these same 2 choices Quit and Goto. You should chose goto and it will send you right to the missing ".

And That Folks is a Screen Saver (more or less)!

The Next program I'm going to type up is a password protection program. I just know all of you paranoia types will love this one. This is by no means perfect security and can be bypassed but this may keep your algebra teacher from finding all of your hidden formulas. The basic idea of a password protection program is that only someone who supplies the correct User Name and Password may use any given computer, or in this case calculator. Usually with computer systems it is shown like this and I will set it up so it uses the same format. For my password prog the user has to supply the user name THEN the password, not both at the same time.

Login:
Password:

Alright here is the source code so set up a new program called PASSWORD and lets go.

PASSWORD

Input is found under PRGM-scroll to I/O-1. != is really the not equal to sign (equal sign with a slash through it) which you will find under TEST. On a computer there isn't a not equals sign so I had to make do. The syntax of Input works as follows. After the word input there is the question which is in parenthesis. Up until this point input is acting just like the Disp command. This is where it is different. Right after the text in quotation marks there is a comma then a variable. In my case the variable is a string, because I expect that they will enter more than a single letter. If they only enter a single letter or numbers there isn't really a problem either. The code should be pretty self explanatory. It starts by saving the Login Name in String 1 and the Password in String 2. Then it sets up a point which it can loop back to and it tests to see if the user has correctly guessed the login name and password. Change these to fit what you like. I use numbers for mine because they are easier to type quickly. At the end I put pause. This just holds leaves the displayed information "WELCOME ABOARD HACKER" on the screen until the user hits ENTER. The flaws I talked about in this program are of course that the user can inter something bogus like TAN or LOG buttons and it will send an error or they could use the 2nd-OFF technique mentioned above whats more they could hit 2nd-QUIT-CLEAR and they are homefree too. Since I don't know enough about the getkey function I can't disable all of these yet. So this of course isn't a perfect program but its not that bad with what we've got. I use it as a game and have my friends try to guess my password and login name.

And that Folks is a Password Protection Prog!

There is certainly more than these two programs in the realm of calculator programming but I'm pretty worn out after typing all of this. I will post a 2nd issue and a 3rd also if I have time. Before I am all finished though I would like to show you a small DRAW tutorial.

How many of you have sat around in algebra trying to draw houses and smily faces on your calculator using that draw function? How many have tried to shade in the whole screen? Well there are easier ways my friends. I'm going to introduce you to some aspects of DRAW (2nd-PRGM).

When you go here...

Here are some footnotes...the notes correspond to the number:

2. X1,Y1,X2,Y2 symbolizes Two points. point 1(X1,Y2) and point 2(X2,Y2). The line connects em.

3. Y=Y intercept (Parrallel to X axis)

4. X=X interecept (Parrallel to Y axis)

7. -X,X,-Y,Y symbolizes (Xmin,Xmax,Ymin,Ymax) used the same as when setting a window. i.e. Shade(-10,10,-10,10) shades the whole screen

9. X,Y is the origin and R is the radius

0. X,Y is where the text starts

Now click 2nd-DRAW-scroll to POINTS. You will be greeted with a list of options dealing with points and pixels (pxl). Pt-On( and Pxl-On( do basically the same thing except one is a point and one is a pixel. A point is what you use when you graph lines etc. A pixel is those little itsy bitsy squares you can see on your calculator. When a pixel is on there is a black spot in that square. When it is off it is "blank". Pt-Change( and Pxl-Change( change the state of a point or pixel respectively. If a pt/pxl is on at the given coordinates it turns it off and visa versa. Pxl-Test( tests to see if a given pixel is on. If the pixel is on it returns 1 to the main math screen. If it is off it returns a 0. All of these Pts and Pxls use the same sytnax pt-on(X,Y) pt-on(X coordinate, Y coordinate). If you draw something really cool you can go over to the 3rd column in Draw and chose storepic and give it a name(I think it only accepts numbers). Whenever you want to see it again just go back to draw and click recallpic with its name. Good luck and have fun.